THE ATMOSPHERIC EFFECT
THE LIGHT ALWAYS WINS
“I remember boasting, “I’ve got it made! Nothing can stop me now! I’m God’s favored one; he’s made me steady as a mountain!” But then suddenly, you hid your face from me. I was panic-stricken and became depressed. Still I cried out to you, Lord God.
I shouted out for mercy, saying, “What would you gain in my death, if I were to go down to the depths of darkness? Will a grave sing your song? How could death’s dust declare your faithfulness?”—PSALMS 30:6-12
Three Things Collide to Bring Us To This Moment:
1. Satan’s Influence
2. The Worlds Degradation
3. Faulty Human Flesh
So hear me now, Lord; show me your famous mercy. O God, be my Savior and rescue me! Then he broke through and transformed all my wailing into a whirling dance of ecstatic praise! He has torn the veil and lifted from me the sad heaviness of mourning. He wrapped me in the glory-garments of gladness. How could I be silent when it’s time to praise you? Now my heart sings out, bursting with joy— a bliss inside that keeps me singing, “I can never thank you enough!””—PSALMS 30:6-12 CTD
THE TWO ATMOSPHERES
DARK AND LIGHT
But it has now been revealed through the appearance of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.—2 TIMOTHY 1:10 (NIV)
DARKNESS TO LIGHT
GENESIS 1:3 – LET THERE BE LIGHT
Darkness is the culmination of the manifestation of the lies of Satan and the acceptance of them by humankind.
Light is the culmination of the manifestation and revelation of God’s character.
DEATH TO LIFE
To understand death, we need to understand its source – disobedience.
The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden— except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.”—GENESIS 2:15-17 (NLT)
Obedience to God’s character would reveal what is right and wrong (Holy Spirit) and eternal life (characteristic of God).
Disobedience has us replacing the real with the fake.
Moving our lives from darkness to light and from death to LIFE requires our obedience to the right source.
DEATH IS DEFEATED, AND LIFE RETURNS.
HOPELESS DESPERATION TO PURE HOPE
For the believer, there is hope beyond the grave because Jesus Christ has opened the door to heaven for us by His death and resurrection.—Billy Graham.
HOPELESS DESPERATION turned to HOPE.
BOREDOM TURNED TO WONDER
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”—JOHN 4:13-14 (NKJV)
OFFENSE DEFEATED BY FORGIVENESS
Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.—EPHESIANS 4:32
Jesus restores the divine concept of forgiveness that changes our response to the atmosphere of our hurts and circumstnce.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.—1 CORINTHIANS 13:4-5 (NLT)
OFFENSE CAN NOT BE CARRIED WHEN OUR OFFENSE IS FORGIVEN.
LIMITED THINKING BECOMES ETERNAL POSSIBILITIES
I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from me, for my Father has given them to me, and he is more powerful than anyone else. No one can snatch them from the Father’s hand.—JOHN 10:28-29 (NLT)
OUR FRANTIC, DESPERATE LIMITED LIVES ARE GIVEN PEACE THROUGH THE GIFT OF ETERNITY.
THE OUTLANDISH PASSION THAT EXISTS WHEN OUR DOUBT IS IRRADICATED
The solution to your doubt is a head-over-heels, blind, passionate embrace of the dream God has for you—one He brought to life with just a Word.—JOHN 10:28-29 (PCV – PASTOR CRAIG’S VERSION)
The remedy for doubt is faith, and faith comes by hearing the Word of God.
SURRENDERED FAITH IN THE FULLNESS OF THE CROSS TURNS OUR DOUBT INTO FEAR.—JOHN 10:28-29 (NLT)And a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that it was already filling. But He was in the stern, asleep on a pillow. And they awoke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace, be still!” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. But He said to them, “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?”—Mark 4:37-40 (NLT)
We SURRENDER in FAITH to the miracle of what we can not see but has already been made so by God’s Word.
WINNING YOUR WAR
Faith in the cross of Jesus awakens the character of God in our lives.
And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”—LUKE 4:17-19
Jesus now reminds us of the divine qualities but, through him, engenders a response in us based on those qualities. What are you willing to do, give up, surrender, or put you faith in to see his LIGHT (character) transform your darkness into light?
So I am willing to endure anything if it will bring salvation and eternal glory in Christ Jesus to those God has chosen.—2 TIMOTHY 2:10 (NLT)
What will you do to run towards the Light and Freedom created at the CROSS?
We declare God’s character, but we transform darkness into light and freedom. Jesus established the cross. But the response is our responsibility.
We can not replicate the perfect qualities of God. But we can let them transform us.
Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”—JOHN 8:12 (NLT)
And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.—1 CORINTHIANS 2:12 (NLT)
TABLE OF THE BLIND BECOMES THE TABLE OF THE FREE
…so that Satan will not outsmart us. For we are familiar with his evil schemes.—2 CORINTHIANS 2:11 (NLT)
JESUS CHANGES THE ATMOSPHERE THROUGH FAITH
With His faith, Jesus changed the atmosphere. Jesus caused a stormy situation to turn into a peaceful situation. The storm did not obey Jesus because He was the Son of God. The storm obeyed Jesus because Jesus had faith and He understood the authority mankind has in the earth (Genesis 1:26).
FAITH IS OUR SUPERNATURAL ABILITY TO TAKE AUTHORITY
Then Jesus told them, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen.—Matthew 21:21 (NLT)
Jesus understood that the magnitude of His faith can move mountains and change the atmosphere.
We too can operate in the same type of faith that Jesus operated in and press light into a world of darkness. Find the atmosphere of freedom in an oppressed world.
Our faith in the accomplished work of the cross…
LET THERE BE LIGHT WAS AN ENABLING AND EMPOWERING COMMAND
Jesus does everything with PASSION!
JESUS OVERCOMES THE WORLD
I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”—John 16:33 (NLT)
The WORLD is restored when it is defined by His WORD!
The remedy for doubt is faith, and faith comes by hearing the Word of God.—JOHN 10:28-29 (NLT)
Our world’s are restored. Through faith we remove worldy thinking, distractions, and values, and our focus becomes the values revealed to us by the WORD.
He restores the WORD as being the ONLY TRUTH and MANIFESTS the fullness of God the Father to all mankind again.
The qualities of God are no longer just values we admire and are informed of, they are realities of our world, lives, and circumstance.
RELATIONSHIP with the Father is what Jesus desires… No matter what we have done. We know that, but through the power of the cross, we begin to believe in that relationship and want it with every fiber of our being…
The sense of ISOLATION is gone because we know God is not offended at us and we have no right to be offended at Him. Reconciliation into the family! The prodigal son!
Relationship defeats loneliness and isolation!
The Spirit was given to draw us towards the Father, now GRACE would present the Father as desiring to draw Himself unto us. He presents His RELATIONAL DESIRE and would stem the LIES in our heads about how unworthy we are. GRACE stops the LIES and transforms our shame into a DESIRE to be with God.
Even though He made the way, LIES still dogged our psyche…
A NEW ATMOSPHERE HAD TO BE DEFINED
But Christ proved God’s passionate love for us by dying in our place while we were still lost and ungodly!—Romans 5:8 (TPT)
Under His governance GRACE is truth. But now this is not only grace given it is grace to give.
HE CONQUERED THE WORLD’S ATMOSPHERE – The Lies of the Flesh
The story of Jesus conquering the dark atmosphere with the Word (Matthew 4:1-11)
The Moment Jesus Defeats Satan and makes a way for anyone who wishes to have the one true DIVINE God.
He restores the fullness of GOD THE FATHER to all mankind again.
HE Displaces any other god, power, principality, or stronghold by dismantling our lies and establishing what is true about God’s Love and Light.
Jesus supernaturally defined WHO God was in us and from this point onward, it was all about empowering us to become who we are in Him.
For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.—Ephesians 6:12 (NLT)
AND THEN…
He did this to make the prophecy of Isaiah come true: Listen, you who live in the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, along the road to the sea and on the other side of the Jordan, and Galilee—the land of the Gentiles! You who spend your days shrouded in darkness can now say, “We have seen a brilliant Light.” And those who live in the dark shadow land of death can now say, “The Dawning Light arises on us.” From that time on Jesus began to proclaim his message with these words: “Keep turning away from your sins and come back to God, for heaven’s kingdom realm is now accessible.”—Matthew 4:14-17 (TPT)
JESUS Restores the Human Spirit (The one God gave us)
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and he has anointed me to be hope for the poor, healing for the brokenhearted, and new eyes for the blind, and to preach to prisoners, ‘You are set FREE!’ I have come to share the message of Jubilee, for the time of God’s great acceptance has begun.”—Luke 4:18-19 (TPT)
Table of Divine Elements = God’s Character in Us
Table of the Blind = What was taken from us
THE TABLE OF THE FREE
Table of the Free = what restoration looks like – our response to His Freedom
THE TRANSFORMATION
We allow His character to shine through our circumstance, transforming who we are.
Example:
Consider it pure JOY (Divine Table), my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds (Table of the Blind), because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance (Table of the Free).—James 1:2-3 (Parenthesis Added)
We get to enjoy all that God is in us, AND what that transforms us into (Unique), and the light completely silhouettes the table of the blind. Jesus had to suffer, but motivated by His Father, he could transcend suffering and uniquely express His Father. (Passion)
FREEDOM IS ON OFFER BUT NOT GUARANTEED
The human heart is still treacherous (Jer. 17:9) We still have to navigate through the darkness and step into the light. The darkness is always lurking but we can not stop there.
LIGHT MUST BE USED TO TRANSFORM
Jesus promises to send us a helper – the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit of TRUTH and the Revealer of GRACE.
If we know who we are, we will know what to do.
Not just His purpose for us, it is our Purpose in Him
THE FRUITS FOR HIS PURPOSE IN US
Galatians 5:22-23 (Fruit of the Spirit)
VERSUS
But when you yield to the life of the Spirit, you will no longer be living under the law, but soaring above it ! The behavior of the self-life is obvious: Sexual immorality, lustful thoughts, pornography, chasing after things instead of God, manipulating others, hatred of those who get in your way, senseless arguments, resentment when others are favored, temper tantrums, angry quarrels, only thinking of yourself, being in love with your own opinions, being envious of the blessings of others, murder, uncontrolled addictions, wild parties, and all other similar behavior. Haven’t I already warned you that those who use their “freedom” for these things will not inherit the kingdom realm of God!—Galatians 5:18-21 (TPT)
THE ATMOSPHERE HEALED AND REVEALED
Lack of self-worth is replaced by a sense of belonging and knowing and belonging to the family and being a CHILD OF GOD!
With eyes wide open to the supernatural abilities and values that God has placed in us, we no longer subscribe to the words of Satan or this world’s influence over us. At the same time, the values of the Word are not just spiritual platitudes but become actual ACTIVATION of His spiritual truths in our lives that demonstrate we are no longer DECEIVED. (FROM HIM TO OTHERS)
THE NEW ATMOSPHERE
Governed by our relationship with God, our new atmosphere is one of being a child of God on a mission to see His truths become our reality and the reality of others. This is the new reality that Jesus spoke of.
So I give you now a new commandment: LOVE each other just as much as I have loved you.—John 13:34 (NLT)
It is new because we are now motivated to respond, not just receive.
Not just the receiving of His love but defining our love-based response.
HATE in the World and within ourselves dissipates. Love is put back in us (WORD) so love is what comes out of us (FRUIT). Control and manipulation are replace by our desire to love others just as God loves us.
Hate and the Right to Hate create such Destruction, but we are free and now begin to CREATE new thoughts and new ways, and can genuinely become NEW through Jesus.
Our OPINIONATED Self that feels we have the right to SELF-DETERMINATION is overwhelmed by the revelations of the Holy Spirit of HIS OPINION of us that brings us to a PEACE that is not just for us but also for all those who we used to beat up with our opinions.
His love breaks us out of every OPPRESSIVE circumstance and excuse – now we are FREE to respond in confidence to LIFE.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.—Hebrews 12:1-3(NLT)
We are amazed, and the sense of rebellion we once had is transformed into REVERENCE.
We cross the threshold of true knowledge when we live in obedient devotion to God. Stubborn know-it-alls will never stop to do this, for they scorn true wisdom and knowledge.—PROVERBS 1:7 (TPT)
REVERENCE changes our UNSTABLE THINKING LOST MINDS into TRUE KNOWLEDGE of truth (John 17:3).
IRRELIGIOUS is transformed into a prayerful HONOR
Prayerful Honor = the space of God in our Lives.
HONOR is restored. We HONOR HIM, and we HONOR OTHERS.
We no longer JUSTIFY SIN, and even though sometimes we DEVIATE, we now have a good fear of disappointing Him, and we humbly REPENT.
PRIDE is a weakness that was installed in us by man, not GOD – He Gave us Power. That power is translated into a response in the form of FAITH called TRUST.
TRUST helps us believe the characteristics of God are good for us but that we can be used to serve others.
When HUMILITY presses out, SELFISHNESS becomes ALL ABOUT OTHERS.
COMPASSION presses VIOLENCE and rage to BALANCE.
Jesus’ SACRIFICE helps us understand that we have nothing without HIM, and his sacrifice shines through our false authority and gives us Peaceful CONFIDENCE.
That Peaceful Confidence (AUTHORITY) changes everything…
SPIRIT OF TRUTH UNLOCKS THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
Transforming our addictions, state of mind and self imposed rights into fruit of the personality of God. (Desparation, depression self-doubt, anger, temper tantrums, excuses)
KINGDOM THINKING
But SEEK first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.—Matthew 6:33
The Character of God is ever present.
In our world, the Table of the Blind governs our thoughts, intents, and actions. But if we truly believe, we gain the strength of character through Faith in Jesus to allow those Supernatural Values and Elements to shine through, transforming us from blind darkness into glorious light.
Next Week: The steps of the FREE
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